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Case study: Yet2.com Inc.

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Yet2.com Inc. has a simple goal: match engineers with technologies used in other industries. So, for instance, an engineer in the oil industry might discover a new use for an enzyme used in laundry detergent.

To that end, director of marketing Leise Roberts last fall hired e-Dialog, Lexington, Mass., to begin an e-mail campaign targeted at companies that might be interested in selling unexploited technologies on Yet2.com.

The exchange first targeted people on two automotive industry magazines' lists of subscribers, directing recipients to a "mini-site" where they could register with Yet2.com. The e-Dialog mailings were tagged to detect HTML-capable e-mail programs, so recipients unable to read HTML e-mail received a text version.

The e-mails performed much better than the direct mail component of the campaign, Roberts said. "People don't take the time to open an envelope," she said. Also, Yet2.com could perform tests much faster with e-mail, allowing the company to change its approach quickly.

The positive e-mail feedback caused Yet2.com to change its market approach. It took its e-mail campaign in-house, making it the centerpiece of not just its marketing but its content delivery. "We found ourselves moving from using e-mail as a prospecting tool to a retention and loyalty tool," Roberts said.

Roberts said 68% of listing views in the first quarter of 2001 came from e-mails, as did 20% of active licensing negotiations. Response rates range from 11% to 15%, and unsubscribe rates are about 0.3% to 0.5%.

The matches made by the database-driven e-mail can be very powerful and cross industry lines. "We had an aviation company develop a technology that's going to be used by a financial institution," Roberts said. "It's a b-to-b exchange you'd never put together before."